


The Devil Doesn't Blink

by Rulerofthefakeempire



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: F/M, Hope, Hydra (Marvel), M/M, Memory Loss, Rehabilitation, Safety
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-20
Updated: 2015-07-20
Packaged: 2018-04-10 07:08:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4382147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rulerofthefakeempire/pseuds/Rulerofthefakeempire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cecil is found locked inside a Hydra prison with chains around his neck, and gashes all over his body. Steve takes him back to Stark Tower, only to discover that he has no memory of anywhere, except for a town that doesn't exist and a woman name Josie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Devil Doesn't Blink

The dungeon was dark, and dank, and deep. 

The walls were wet and thick with slime, but it was hot. They were somewhere in South America, somewhere too humid for it’s own good, but he didn’t actually know where. He hadn’t been paying attention when they had told him, and now he sort of regretted that. 

For the most part the danger was over now. 

Most of the Hydra agents were being lead away in handcuffs and the rest were being carted off to the hospital in handcuffs. Mostly it was just everyone in a lot of handcuffs. The metallic sound of Tony’s boots smashing against the stone echoed through the passageways, mostly for effect, and he tried to remember what he was doing there. He wondered, but he knew. 

A few minutes earlier Tony’s scanners had picked up a faint heat signal coming from way down below them, down a small staircase, in the basement. It wasn’t that they thought it was something important; it was just that Fury was on their asses about collateral damage and they were bored. Plus, Thor and Tony liked to scare terrified Hydra interns. Steve watched them from behind, with on of his hands in his pocket (someone had given him a jacket, even though it was so goddamn hot) and he thought about how Tony got his beard so.... Tony. 

He thought that was something he ought to know. 

He glanced down at the screen Tony had given him and watched the little red dot. He frowned. It seemed to be flashing more and more infrequently and he muttered something sour. He didn’t know whether the blinking represented a heartbeat, but he hoped not. He wondered if Tony had noticed that they were in a dungeon, and there was generally only one type of person kept in dungeons. 

He didn’t think that there were going to be any interns down here. 

He frowned again and, quietly slipped down one of the other passages, knowing that both Tony and Thor were going in the wrong direction. He found himself okay with that. He walked quickly in hot pursuit of the stationary red dot, straining to ear any movement from a prisoner.

He could hear his companions calling for him, but the dot was fading again and anxiety was building up in veins. When he found the door that would lead to the red dot, he hovered outside, wondering if he would see something horrid inside it. He took a deep breath and remembered all of the terrifying things that he had ever seen so that he wouldn’t be scared. 

He was scared anyway. 

He placed his hand on the doorknob and swung it open, shining his touch into the small space, reflected back at him by the eyes of someone’s eyes. 

The man was chained to the wall, bloodied, and trying to hide his eyes from the light in his shoulder, he made no sound, not even a squeak and Steve stared at him and he couldn’t quite breath. The man was shirtless and only wore a tattered pair of pants and he was leaning forward, with his arms trapped behind him, straining his shoulders. His hair was ashen blond, falling in front of his face, curly, it was curly, and dirty, and his eyes were looking at him desperately, pleading at him, for help, for safety, for anything that wasn’t this. 

And there was a mechanical collar tightly clamped around his neck. 

All over his body were rippling tattoos, purple, and tribal, and slithering weakly all over his skin. He was young, too young for this, and he was skinny, and weak and he looked like he had been through hell. And there were welts all over his body, and lashes, and burns and he was too skinny, and too young and Steve could see his ribs poking out of his skin. 

Then the man opened his mouth and called to him; an alien noise, a desperate noise. And noise that wasn’t in his language, but somehow he knew what it was.

“Help me.” 

He burst into action, unable to let this continue for any longer than necessary, he couldn’t bare the look into his eyes. He yelled over his shoulder to Thor and Tony, for help, for Tony’s ability to save people with machines and Thor’s ability to carry things comforting. And he needed help, he needed someone to help him get the collar off and heal the man, because he didn’t know how. He dropped the man of iron’s tablet thing and ran forward, skidding to his knees and across the floor in an effort to help. The man watched him wearily, but Steve was sure that he really didn’t have the energy to do anything. 

He just looked so tired. 

And so destroyed.

And so broken. 

Steve gripped onto the man’s shoulders and the man screamed in pain at having his arms moved after so long. Steve persisted and the man continued to scream, and fight him, which was mostly just him thrashing his head about. It was as if the collar around his neck paralyzed him. It probably did. 

Steve decided not to think about the moving tattoos. 

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” He muttered to the man, hoping that he would be able to understand him, he didn’t even seem coherent, not the right kind of coherent anyway. “It’s okay, we’re going to get you somewhere safe, we’ll get you out of here. I promise. You’re going to be fine.” The man whimpered and Steve screamed for Tony over his shoulder again. He forced the man against the stonewall to give his shoulders a rest, and the man screamed again, trying desperately to push him away.

Steve told him the most comforting things he could think of, until finally Tony and Thor came skidding around the corner. They didn’t pause; they didn’t take a breath like Steve had. They just ran to them, because they knew what to do, because they were both just that sort of person. They knew what to do.

The man called out to them as if to say ‘get this madman away from me’. No one listened to him and his implied speech, but Steve just patted his hair. The man glared at him, but his body was also leaning on him, so it lost some of its buzz. Steve wondered if the man could understand a single word that he was saying. 

As if they shared a mind Thor held the man’s jaw, so that Tony could get to the collar, and the chains. Thor tilted the man in his arms onto Steve’s shoulder and the man looked at him as if he was an alien, which, in most respects, he was, but the man didn’t know that. Tony on the other hand inspected the collar for a moment before holding his metal glove over the latch. The collar seemed to come off in his hands and for a moment they were all silent, the man going limp in their collective arms. 

He stared forward and Tony snapped his fingers in front of his face and asked him if he could hear what he was saying. 

The man was completely silent, no calls came out of his mouth; there was just the unavoidable sound of metal creaking. And then very, very slowly the man pulled at his chains, the shackles cutting though his skin, but he didn’t stop until they broke free of the wall and he fell forward, into Thor’s arms. 

They stared at him and he stared back with a vaguely shocked looked on his face.

But then the man growled at the god holding him and pushed him back with a force that he really shouldn’t have had considering his condition. And when he looked back up at them with his teeth bared his eyes weren’t the way that his eyes had been before. 

Now, his eyes were pearly white and flickering in the low light, his tattoos racing around his skin and he seemed to buzz with power. All three of them began to back away as he hovered off the floor. 

The man roared at them. He didn’t yell, or scream, he roared. Honest to goodness, he roared, and then after that he went very pale and his voice dropped and they had to all rush forward to catch him before he came crashing down. 

…

There was a time when he had been very tall. 

When he had fought for just the majority and, now, it felt like his whole life hinged on this one guy not being dead, and not being traumatized, or tortured. And he didn’t know why, it was just important. It just felt like whatever had happened to him was more important than he knew. 

He wanted to do something; he wanted to help. 

Mostly he just stared and the man did not stare back. 

He lay on a cold, metal slab in the middle of the ship and Steve sat beside him in a cold, metal chair, next to the slab, with his chin resting on his hands, and watching the man’s tattoos revolve around his arms. 

Bruce stood on the other side with a soft green cloth, soaked in warm water and disinfectant, cleaning the gashes on the man’s torso and starting to sew him up. 

Bruce hadn’t even really blinked when they had brought him abroad, just hummed disapprovingly and cleared his things off the slab. Tony stood beside him as he examined the body, asking dumb questions and rattling off theories like the man wasn’t really a man and he wasn’t really alive and he hadn’t really been tortured.   
He was just a body, just an interesting body. 

Steve supposed that it was his way of coping with horror. It was the only way that he knew to exist. 

“What do you think the eyes and the hovering was about?” He asked, poking holes in to Bruce’s silence. Steve’s eyes flickered up to him and them back down at the swimming tattoos. 

He wasn’t that interested, but Bruce dutifully answered anyway, within the best of his ability. 

“It was probably just a defense mechanism,” he said, dabbing his cloth to a gash under the man’s ribs. “He was scared and in pain so he made a show of looking big, unfortunately he didn’t have the energy to uphold it, so his body shut down. The collar would of restricted him I suppose, once to took it off, his instincts took control.”

“So it wasn’t voluntary?” Steve asked. He would’ve liked that. Bruce nodded his head. 

“I highly doubt it.” 

Steve nodded his head and went back to setting it on his hands and watching the man’s swirling tattoos, they looked like tentacles to him. 

Tony continued to babble, darting from moral to moral and purpose to purpose. He didn’t listen, except for when Tony said that they would be home for dinner and that he was already having Pepper make up a room for the man, and that Loki was being briefed, because he was good at that sort of thing, what with the magic and all. 

Steve supposed that it was how he showed he cared. 

…

“Kiddo?” he asked, “Ida, can you hear me?” he clicked his hands in front of the man’s open eyes and Loki clucked agitatedly at him. Tony had previously decided that the man looked like an Ida, and while they were sure that wasn’t his name, it sounded good and they needed something to call him. 

The room that Tony had made up for him was beautiful like all the rooms, but it seemed to be purposefully the opposite of his cell. It was white and had bright colors and pretty, comforting things. 

Ida had muttered all sorts of strange things in his sleep, when he was just about to slip from sleep to consciousness. Things like ‘wheat and wheat by products’ and ‘weird at last, weird at last’ he had to remember to write them down. He was quite fond of them. 

And now he just stared at the ceiling and didn’t say a word except:

“I’m in a bed, I don’t usually dream about being in a bed.” He sounded mostly curious, but also a little disgruntled. Steve watched him hold the sheets in his hands as Loki checked his pulse and muttered clever things under his breath. Loki was in an almost permanent state of muttering clever things under his breath these days. 

“What do you usually dream about?” 

Steve didn’t know why Loki thought that was important, but Ida’s eyes looked to him, and squinted. 

“Hanging from the ceiling,” the man said, quietly. “Like normal.” 

That was pretty weird. And the Steve told him so and Ida’s eyes moved to him, like they were two marbles, rolling around in his head. Ida squinted at him too. 

“You’re that man,” he said. “From that other weird dream,” 

“Wasn’t a dream. Look at me please,” Loki gently took the man’s face in his hand, turning back to him. Bruce had given him one of the little flashlights and Ida’s eyes rolled back to him, and blinked, the thin man held open his eyes, and made him stare into the torch. Ida barely reacted. 

“You are a magic user?” He asked. 

He seemed to stare past the torch and straight at Loki, and he didn’t blink at the question. He didn’t blink any questions. Steve watched the, and waited for something interesting to happen. 

“Yes,” Loki answered, inspecting his pupils. “Are you?” Loki went on to feeling under Ida’s jaw for his glands. If he had glands. 

“Not the same as you.” 

Loki nodded as if he understood. Loki always looked like he understood. 

“Can you tell me your name?” 

The man’s eyes were fading again and he shook his head. 

“Can you tell me what species you are?”

The man shook his head again. 

“Can you tell me where you’re from?”

“Nightvale.” The man croaked. 

Finally, a response. 

“And where’s that?” 

Loki had this way of speaking; this way that made you feel like speaking was worth your while. 

“I dunno.” 

Like Loki the man had a way of speaking. Not the same, but similar. The man spoke like you had either listened or you got lied to. There were only those two options. 

“Do you remember anything else?” 

The man shook his head. 

“Just Nightvale?” 

Ida nodded. 

“That’s okay. You just got to sleep now, we’ll see what happens when you wake up.” And then like Loki had got all that he needed he pressed his thumb to Ida’s forehead and his eyes closed and he fainted.


End file.
